


weorðmyndum

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Espionage, F/M, Gen, Intrigue, POV Outsider, Parent Valka (How to Train Your Dragon), Religion, Religious Conflict, Women Being Awesome, attempted coup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 13:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20390620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Who will rid Berk of this turbulent priest?





	weorðmyndum

**Author's Note:**

> A few weeks ago I asked for palace intrigue prompts and then immediately came up with this one myself, which obviously defeated the purpose of asking for prompts but was nonetheless very fun to write! Some notes:
> 
> 1) I have played merry hell with early mediaeval Scottish geography, mostly because all my understanding of it is unmoored from any kind of timeline, and because I was writing flashfic and had limited googling time.
> 
> 2) Cinaeburh probably did not exist. I made up a name for a theoretical royal burgh. If it really did exist, I hope the actual burgh will accept my apologies.

** _weorðmyndum_ ** _: a kenning, lit. mind’s worth: honour._

From the kings’ burghs of Alba to the ports of Dal Ríata, they tell stories of the island men. Far to the north, across turbulent seas, they say, there are wyrms like quicksilver and warriors like death; a queen as fair as ice, a king as stern as the cliffs, rich waters, gold flowing through traders’ palms, fierce fire and fighters no Norseman would willingly face, let alone a sensible mainlander.

They call the place Berk, which sounds, to Brother Finan, like something of a letdown.

He’s heard a lot of fine tales. You do, in strange parts of the world, and Brother Finan has been to several in his short life, and hopes to visit more (if God will spare him to do so). He specialises in the strange, which is why he’s here, in Cinaeburh, and not in Durham, with Bishop Dunstan, where there is no scope for his talents and little chance for him to prove himself. The Word may spread itself, but a little help from the Lord’s servants will not go amiss. And if the island men of Berk are as rich in gold as Brother Finan has heard, well, surely it is time they became rich in faith, too?

He listens more than he talks. Berk is ruled by a young man, he learns, the son of a mighty jarl, dead in some kind of accident. (‘Accident’, Brother Finan is sure.) His mother yet lives, and occupies a place of honour. He has a wife, of whom little is known save her beauty, and in whom Brother Finan takes little interest. There are ambitious lords, and a loud-voiced cousin, and the new jarl, Brother Finan hears, has the reputation of a weak boy who grew into a young man hardly any stronger. Jarl Stoick must have been a man of remarkable strength, to keep the boy’s place for him. It won’t be difficult to get him out of it again, and install a man who knows his duty is to God, and that a respectable percentage of his wealth belongs in Durham coffers.

Brother Finan experiences a public vision from God right on schedule, and sets sail.

In some respects his information was correct. Jarl Hiccup is indeed little more than a boy. He has a stern face, true, but shy ways, and his lord-cousin is an ambitious braggart and a warrior who would outshine him in the eyes of any people. His wife is indeed lovely, but she conducts herself as a hoyden, not a princess, and she watches Brother Finan with narrow, suspicious eyes. She _should_ be afraid. They have no children, and a queen without a son at her knee is no queen at all. 

There are, too, a pair of noisy twins, a lord and a lady, mischievous and strong in arms but slow-witted and easily manipulated; and a merchant-adventurer with barbarous facial markings, a man who can be bought. Jarl Hiccup’s only certain loyalists with any strength of arms - if one discounts his queen and her little axe - are a timid lump with more book-learning than sense, and a maimed armourer, who once held a position of trust by his father’s side. And this is his circle of most trusted friends! The other men of the islands rally to him, but none are truly close to him; instead, Brother Finan believes, they follow him for fear of the wyrms.

And there are wyrms everywhere. The sleek black beast who trails Jarl Hiccup. The opal-scaled creature that caws after the lady Astrid. The revolting two-headed monster that the twin tools dote on. To say nothing of the tiny, shrieking beasts that infest the hut Brother Finan builds for himself, and don’t even have the intelligence to fear the holy cross. 

But perhaps that’s a blessing in disguise, because it leads him to the key to the whole puzzle: the lady Valka, the jarl's mother.

Lady Valka is soft-spoken, with a long, sweet face like a carved saint’s, and a voice like heather honey, and so gentle a way with the little monsters that they turn soft and yielding at her mere words. She is quiet and retiring, and visits only because Jarl Hiccup requested that she help Brother Finan with his ‘dragon problem’. Brother Finan is imagining that he could make a holy anchorite of her before she has half finished leading the - Terrible Terrors? What? - out of his house. 

He speaks to her of Mother Mary, and the angels, and she hides her interest well. He speaks to her of royal women on the mainland, and honours her as a dowager queen should be honoured, and offers to pray for the soul of her husband Stoick.

She keeps coming back and listens, though she never says much. Which is, of course, only right and proper. A woman may neither preach nor teach. Saint Valka of the Isles; he can see it now, he will live to write her hagiography.

Brother Finan speaks too to the twins. To the lady (if he can call her that) of king’s men who might be a match for her valour and beauty, who could bring her wealth and strength of arms. To the lord (if that’s the right word) of land ripe for the taking, and heiresses in need of husbands. And he speaks as well to Jarl Hiccup’s cousin, who is less credulous, but easily flattered, and the merchant-adventurer Eret, who says little in reply, but whose eyes linger on the finely worked metal of the small Communion vessels Brother Finan brought from Durham. That one knows quality when he sees it, and money too; he knows where his advantage lies.

None of them are over twenty-three, nor have they seen a wider world, all the claims of their wyrms notwithstanding; is Brother Finan supposed to believe that the jarl has flown as far as Norway and returned in the same day? No. They have none of them seen politics before, and this is almost too easy.

Brother Finan begs audiences with the jarl, too, for appearance’s sake, and finds that if the jarl is neither intelligent nor cunning he is clever. He learns Latin quickly and develops an understanding of Scripture, though he will not reject his pre-existing (and extremely casual) faith. He seems puzzled, when Brother Finan declines to teach the lady Astrid, but says it may be for the best.

“For is that not the role of a husband?” Brother Finan says. “To teach his wife?”

“Uh - what?” Jarl Hiccup says, apparently distracted. His beast croaks. “Um, if you say so. Brother Finan.”

One eye on the wyrm, Brother Finan proposes that some brothers of his home diocese, Durham, be permitted to visit him, and see the paradise of Christ’s learning that he begins to build here.

The wyrm roars, and Brother Finan flinches, but the jarl does not. And he agrees. It is foolish of him, really, not to have Brother Finan’s letters read; or so Brother Finan believes. The lady Valka - inviolable, if anyone in this barbaric court is - flies them off the islands for him herself.

  


The day of these holy brothers’ arrival, Brother Finan is mysteriously missing.

“Foreigners!” Gobber says in disgust. “Better hope he’s not wandered off a cliff.”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Hiccup says absently, cleaning his sword, the one that lights on fire.

Toothless throws up a fish, meaningfully.

“Ew! Bud! There are starving Monstrous Nightmares out there that would be grateful for a nice piece of cod, you know.”

“Eurgh,” says Astrid, but pats Toothless comfortingly on the shoulder. “Toothless, I know exactly what you mean.”

  


“Yeah,” says Jarl Hiccup to three noble knights of Alba, dressed in cassocks that fit them ill. He looks weary and annoyed, and he’s sitting on a heavy carved chair meant for a man much larger. He lounges in it like it’s his own bed, and there’s some kind of pipe arrangement resting over his knee. “I read the book the priest brought. Brother Finan. Interesting text, the Bible. I like the Edda better myself. Or the Book of Dragons.” 

The knights stir. So does the great black warm lying before the fire. It growls, a soft rumble of thunder. 

“But there was a passage that struck me,” Jarl Hiccup continues. “_Nolite arbitrari quia pacem venerim mittere in terram: non veni pacem mittere, sed gladium._ Interesting. Remind me how it goes, Fishlegs.”

The bulky warrior who escorted them up from the docks, the one who looks timidly biddable but nonetheless heavily muscled, speaks up in a surprisingly soft voice. “Um. _Do not think that I come to bring peace on Earth. I do not come to bring peace, but a sword._”

“I do not come to bring peace,” Jarl Hiccup repeats. The pipe lights up into a sword of fire, and the knights draw their own swords. “I do not come to bring peace, but a sword. Man, I hate being right. Astrid.”

The second warrior, the one too slight and fair to be of much account, moves like lightning. There’s a short fight, brutal and quickly lost. 

“Shame about the floor,” says Astrid Hofferson, sometime queen of Berk, when it’s all over.

“It’ll scrub right out.” Hiccup sighs. “Toothless, buddy, plasma blast?”

A burst of purple light, and the bodies are soot. 

“I’ll get a broom,” says Fishlegs.

“Thanks.”

From the wide doors of the Great Hall, you can see all the way down into the harbour. Down in the harbour Tuffnut and Ruffnut are setting the invaders’ ships on fire. So is Hookfang. Hiccup can’t see what Snotlout’s doing, but it’s probably a heroic speech. At least Gobber and Eret are supervising. There won’t be any survivors telling tales, and by the time the sun sets there’ll be nothing to prove the knights ever made it to Berk. 

“And the priest?” enquires Astrid.

“Oh,” Hiccup says. “I think Mom has that in hand.”

  


(In bright noonday sunlight the great owl-headed wyrm set Brother Finan down on an islet of bare rock, and its fearsome rider dismounted and pulled off the strange helmet, releasing her long, silver-streaked chestnut hair, revealing the calm smile Brother Finan had thought made for a saint.

“And a foolish one you are,” the lady Valka said indulgently, while his jaw hung loose. “Did you think I would just let you get my son killed over your precious god? Thor’s bones! Think again.”

“Lady Valka -”

“I’ve told you a thousand times. Not that you listened. It’s just Valka.” She pointed the staff at him. “You have friends on the mainland and a reason for being here. Start talking.”

“I -”

“Start talking, or you don’t leave this islet alive. I know these waters well. No-one’s coming to rescue you.”

After some time, he began to talk. The jarl’s mother listened patiently, and sorted truth from fiction. He could conceal nothing from her, and the wyrm watched him with knowing eyes.

As the sun set, he fell silent.

“_Christe, audi me_,” he said, when there was no reply from the lady Valka. “_Christe, exaudi me._ I have no fear of martyrdom.”

Valka chuckled richly. “Oh, you’re not going to be a martyr,” she said. “People would have had to have heard of you for _that_ to happen. And besides - I promised you’d leave this islet alive.”)

  


Late at night, Valka passes by the chief’s house. Her clothes are dry and so are Cloudjumper’s claws. Why spill blood when the sea is right there?

“Astrid’s upstairs,” Hiccup says, elbow-deep in the washing up. “All this excitement’s not good for the baby. She’s exhausted now. Everything all right?”

“Absolutely fine,” Valka says, and smiles. “Tell her I stopped by to say so, when she wakes up.”

  


In the next great thunderstorm, Brother Finan’s hut is struck by lightning and burns. But all his notes were already ash.


End file.
